So it is a gap between the traditional economy and the emerging cryptoeconomy focused on Norway, I do not know why this reminds me another coin of Iceland.
BitGate Norway is doing two things at the same time. On the one hand it's proof-of-concept for the global solution, using a decentralized exchange gateway to bridge the gap between the traditional economy and the emerging cryptoeconomy. On the other hand it's an easy to use, safe and regulated service for Norwegians to trade NOK for BTC. The upshot is that one of the reasons there is no such service in Norway is because of our tricky regulations, something that the decentralized exchange gateway helps solve! Finally, the reason decentralized exchange gateways have been doing poorly is because centralized exchanges are dominating in most markets, making it difficult for them to get a foothold. By starting in Norway we have a nice minimum viable market were we can incubate our service and make it ready for the global stage.
For FintechFest February 9th we'll crowdfund for equity in our legal entity BitGate AS, as the crowd will mostly consist of investors from traditional finance. Depending on how that works out we might have it running for a few weeks via Invesdor.
It looks promising, watching bitgate. If you will be spending on the ICO Invesdor, let us know. Although I think you will find here a lot of investors. Good luck.
I think it will be difficult for the cryptocommunity to participate in the Invesdor crowdfund. Invesdor is like Kickstarter, only they give away equity for participation. Since we are giving away traditional equity in that round, there are strong requirements for identity verification to comply with KYC/AML regulations and the like. We will probably do a proper ICO later this year though, after we get some IRL traction in Norway and have the business model and roadmap to scale globally ready.